


my god is my love of god

by strawb3rryshake



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Pre-Canon, Raphael is my favorite character what can I say, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:28:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28690200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawb3rryshake/pseuds/strawb3rryshake
Summary: "In June of 1982, in Raphael Santiago’s twenty-third year of endless death, Raúl Zurita hired five skywriters to debut a poem he called “La Vida Nueva”. Magnus Bane, with whom Raphael was staying at the time, had hauled him out of bed at two in the afternoon just to shove him into a shaded corner and show him, through the window, the very first line."–Raphael cannot forgive, nor can he forget. (at least not initially)
Relationships: Magnus Bane & Raphael Santiago
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	my god is my love of god

**Author's Note:**

> (TW suicide for the Igbo Landing link)

In June of 1982, in Raphael Santiago’s twenty-third year of endless death, Raúl Zurita hired five skywriters to debut a poem he called “La Vida Nueva”. Magnus Bane, with whom Raphael was staying at the time, had hauled him out of bed at two in the afternoon just to shove him into a shaded corner and show him, through the window, the very first line.

“Mi Dios es hambre,” ( _my God is hunger_ ) Magnus declares. He looks pleased as punch, the cat that caught the canary. His accent is thickly Peruvian.

Raphael wants to kill him. He chooses to goes back to bed.

•••

In June of 1959, Raphael had said a tight and tearful goodbye to his mother and three siblings and then ushered himself out of their lives almost entirely. Magnus, who had lifted Raphael out of a hell of his own making, found him on a park bench the next day, waiting for the sunrise. By that afternoon he had purchased a [brownstone in Park Slope](https://www.trulia.com/p/ny/brooklyn/43-8th-ave-brooklyn-ny-11217--588672) for a quarter of a million dollars and made Raphael up a room.

“I don’t usually take in strays,” he had lied, “but I am entirely too fond of your mother and your death would destroy her.”

 _I’m already dead_ , Raphael had tried to say. Magnus had shushed him with a flick of his hand.

“If we can make it through the first year, we’ll be fine,” he’d murmured, “just let me help you.”

Raphael, who wanted nothing to do with vampires or their clans, had had no choice. He stayed holed up in Magnus’ apartment, drinking blood out of milk bottles Magnus kept in the icebox. In an attempt to widen his social circle Magnus would introduce him to Ragnor Fell and Catarina Loss. The three of them together had raised many things in the past and vowed to do the best they could with Raphael in his second infancy.

If there had been any sort of religious proclivity amongst the three of them, aside from mild intellectual interest and general belief in the unknowable, they might’ve been considered godparents, but Raphael could not even say God until he was twenty-one and even then, it was with great effort.

•••

The second day Raphael resists Magnus’ coaxing, his fluttering hands that mean to pluck him out of bed like a ripe fruit. He cannot, however, block out the boom of Magnus’ voice as he yells the second line of the poem from the hallway. “Mi Dios es nieve.” ( _my God is snow_ )

Raphael hates snow. He tells Magnus as much that evening and though it is June and blisteringly hot in Brooklyn, Magnus tuts and conjures him a scarf.

•••

The first vampire he meets is Camille Belcourt. She is something of Magnus’—not a friend, not quite an enemy, an ex he hesitates to claim. They swing wide around each other like a planet and its moons. Raphael cannot stand her because she is not ashamed of what she is: of being a vampire, of being ancient, of being beautiful, of being cruel. Catarina despises her, Ragnor despises her. Magnus tries to; struggles.

He must want something from her that she had been in the habit of giving, whether that was a love that transcends the erotic or a respect that transcended the fundamental. Each time she careens into their life he will grasp for it and come up empty. When she leaves, she is absent just long enough for him to forget that he’d even tried, much less failed. She storms into and around him like a hurricane and in the face of her, Magnus trembles.

Raphael will trust him all the more for this vulnerability--will tell him this over dinner one night, when it’s just the two of them, and let Magnus gather him into his arms and weep over his hair saying “oh my darling. Thank you for sharing that with me.”

•••

“Mi Dios es no _,_ ” ( _my God is no_ ) Magnus yells to him on the third day. Raphael, bleary eyed, assumes he is having him on. Comes out to see for himself, and then lets out a callous guffaw.

“This a joke,” he growls, “has to be.”

Magnus shrugs. “Isn’t any attempt at making sense of life a little bit nonsensical?” he says, unrepentant even in the face of Raphael’s glower.

“Fuck off,” Raphael says eventually, and goes back to sleep.

•••

The second vampire he meets is a friend of Catarina’s named Bienfait. The two of them visit in the summer of 1979, bearing gifts in the form of concentrated vampire venom and a loose-leaf tea blend that Magnus coos and fawns over. They stay for a week. In the hot heat of their last night at the loft, he and Catarina and Magnus sit out on the balcony and roll an herbal joint as they have done several nights in a row. Chamomile for nerves, mullein for relaxation, lavender for flavor, wrapped up together with an indica in a cigarette paper Magnus magics out of thin air.

Two times Raphael has declined an invitation to join them but the third time he accepts, and when Bienfait hands him the joint, he tells him the story of another vampire he knew—a man called Amour de Dieu, who fought to say his own name for years after his turning and who killed a group of overseers at a sugar plantation in Martinique, freeing a hundred enslaved persons in a single evening. “You see,” Bienfait says to him, and he is darker than the night, wiser, “God cannot love us any less than them.”

Raphael cannot believe him.

•••

“Raphael,” Magnus summons him on the fifth day, and when he does not answer, Magnus calls his name again, saccharinely. Raphael kicks the blankets off in a huff, saunters into the shadows.

“Yes?”

Magnus is standing at the window like a museum docent, arms folded. “Mi Dios es desangaño,” ( _my God is disillusionment_ ) he says pointedly. Raphael blinks once, twice. Turns around and walks back where he came from.

•••

To this day he cannot say the Ave Maria in its entirety. Either for the affront of the stolen blood running through his veins or the crush of his own self-loathing, the words stick like an itch in his throat. _‘Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum’_ is as far as he makes it before he chokes and his eyes begin to water.

Ragnor catches him in the act once and quickly finishes the prayer for him. From his knees, Raphael glares up at him, eyes bloodshot. The whip of his self-flagellation has been stolen and he will have to wait another day for his chance at forgiveness. Unless he wants to try praying to a saint.

“It doesn’t work like that,” he mutters as Ragnor stares him down, “you can’t just say it for me.”

“Of course I can,” Ragnor shoots back, “’James five-sixteen: _‘_ _pray one for another that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.’_ Do you doubt my righteousness, Raphael?”

Raphael grins at him, but it is an awful, godless thing.

“Do you think you can heal me, Ragnor?”

Ragnor lays a hand on his shoulder, squeezes lightly. “You are not the only person who has been raised from the dead,” he says, “only one of many. The most famous of which now sits at the right hand of God.”

Before Raphael can rebuke him for this comparison, Ragnor continues. “You should not be so hard on yourself, my friend.”

What Raphael will not say to this is that he knows no other way. What he says instead is “can you say it again?” and before he has even finished the question, Ragnor has sunk to his knees beside him.

•••

Zurita’s God is many things over the following week. Carroña, paraiso, pampa, Chicano. ( _carrion, paradise, prairie, Chicano_ ). Raphael’s lips quirk up at the last one. Magnus tells him that Zurita is Chilean, was a computer salesman before becoming a poet, was detained in the belly of a ship with a thousand of his countrymen on the day of the military coup in ’73.

Raphael is beginning to like him, until the ninth day when Magnus does not bellow the newest line of the poem at him through the door. Raphael has to stumble before the window at the eleventh hour to read in the faintest wisps of smoke: mi Dios es vacio. ( _my God is emptiness_ )

Magnus watches him from the kitchen, face expressionless, anticipatory. Raphael ignores him.

•••

In the spring of 1981, Catarina pops in out of nowhere and suggests that he should get baptized again. As if this sin could be forgiven. As if an anathema could give itself over to God. The look Raphael gives her is unforgiving but she pays it no mind.

“I’m no priest,” she tells him, “but I’ve baptized my fair share.”

In the 1840s, in the wet heat of the south, she would hold her service. At her side, a bucket of Mississippi river water; above her, the tiniest sliver of the moon. Her congregation would shuffle up one by one to receive a blessing, a cupful of water over the head. And then, rendered invisible to the human eye, they would run north to New York, some onwards to Canada. Their descendants Catarina still speaks with to this day.

“I don’t think vampirism counts as an original sin,” she admits, “but I think it might bring you some peace.” 

Raphael sets his jaw. He cannot enter a church, cannot set foot on hallowed ground. When he reminds her of this, she laughs at his small-mindedness and tells him in turn about the Georgia coast, about Dunbar creek on St. Simon’s Island. If its namesake alone is not enough, she whispers to him the history of [Igbo Landing](https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/igbo-landing-mass-suicide-1803/) and asks if he could truly think of any place holier.

“I’d burn,” he says, “in holy water.”

Catarina regards him with a shrewd and calculating eye. “No,” she says to him, not unkindly, “I don’t think you would.”

•••

The tenth day. Magnus again does not call for Raphael but the habit has been formed. He rises to a clock that reads 3:34pm and emerges to see through the window: mi Dios es herida _._ ( _my God is wound_ ). He wants to laugh. He wants to cry. He does neither.

•••

They do go south eventually, in a baby blue Cadillac Magnus ‘borrows’ from an old friend. Ragnor drives, Catarina rides shotgun, Magnus and Raphael hunch together in the backseat. Under the cover of night, they cruise through a portal and onto the 231 to Panama City and the Gulf of Mexico. They park as close to the beach as they can, slipping out of their shoes and padding barefoot over the sand. Dressed head to toe in white, they are a trio of ghosts, wading into the water and muttering to one another under their breath.

From the shore, Raphael watches them and wonders if he might drown. He knows intellectually that he cannot, that nothing short of a stake or the sun could kill him, but he wonders. Perhaps God will see this attempt at sanctification, this unholy second baptism of an undead thing, as a mortal sin and strike him down where he stands. He imagines it, imagines sinking to lay among the rocks and the silt, tries to decide if it would be condemnation or absolution.

•••

The eleventh line of the poem reads: mi Dios es dolor. ( _my God is pain_ ) That day Raphael stays in bed, past sunset and the descent of the night. Magnus brings him blood in a champagne flute and crawls into bed with him, pulls him into his embrace.

“I am so sorry, darling,” he says, “I didn’t think it would end like this.”

From where he is tucked into Magnus’ neck, Raphael lets out a hoarse laugh.

•••

He does not drown.

He remembers shucking his shoes, his jacket, his button up, his pants. Remembers stumbling into the gulf in nothing but a white undershirt and white underwear, moonlight turning the water into liquid silver. It illuminates the bodies of his three friends like saints—Ragnor the Father, Magnus the Son, Catarina the Holy Spirit. Magnus pulls him close, one arm behind his back, one splayed across his chest. Catarina approaches with chalice in hand, but Raphael shakes his head.

“Don’t,” he murmurs, and then to Magnus: “dunk me.”

He does. As Raphael is thrust below the surface of the gulf he hears Catarina’s voice ring out like an altar bell.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—”

The water comes to cover him like a blanket, rushing into his ears, his nose, his mouth. He can see nothing but fractals of iridescent light in a vortex of undulating blackness, can barely feel Magnus’ arms around him. He does not need to breathe but in this moment his body forgets, his lungs heaving, flooding like Noah’s earth.

A second later and he is pulled up to the light, coughing, spluttering, eyes stinging. The first thing he sees is Magnus’ face, the sun yellow of his irises and their slit pupils. He is smiling.

“I baptize you,” he hums as Catarina swipes the oil of catechumens over Raphael’s heart, presses the oil of chrism onto the crown of his head with her thumb. It burns, but so does the wind.

“Amen,” he says.

•••

The twelfth day of Zurita’s skywriting is also the three hundred and sixty-sixth day after his second baptism and tonight they will have dinner at the loft. Ragnor and Catarina will bring gifts that Raphael will pretend he didn’t want and smother him with the affection he pretends he cannot stand. It will be a good night. A hopeful one.

It gets an early start when, in the hottest hour of the day, Magnus flings open the door to his room like a herald of the rapture. He is half dragged, half carried to the shadow they have used as their opera box and left there to come fully to his senses. Magnus cannot contain himself, he runs to the window, slaps his hand repeatedly at the glass where the plane has left its final message. “Read it, Raphael,” he crows; he is up on the balls of his feet in excitement, “read it.”

It takes a moment for the fog in his eyes to clear, but in time he obeys. “Mi Dios es mi amor de Dios,” he says without hesitation, without harm. Then bursts into tears.

**Author's Note:**

> “In brief, we should keep on proposing Paradise, even if the evidence at hand might indicate that such a pursuit is a folly.” – Raúl Zurita 
> 
> La Vida Nueva was, in fact, written over New York in skywriting but not line by line as i have depicted it. you can read more about that, as well as the poem in its entirety,  here. also, as a lapsed catholic, i humbly apologize for any theological mistakes and misinformation. as always, thank you for being here x


End file.
